Magda paced off a short distance, chewing a thumbnail, thinking. “It would be part of them by birth?”

“Yes. You would be deciding not only for you, but for them as well. In a way, you would be creating their destiny.”

She turned back. “No more than giving them the destiny of eyesight. I would be giving them a different kind of vision.”

“But if—”

“Merritt, if we don’t do this, I will have no chance to have any offspring because I will be dead. If I live, I will only be able to bring a child into a tortured existence of half people crafted to fit Emperor Sulachan’s deluded notions for the world of life. I may even be changed into one of those half people, giving birth to a soulless offspring. Is that better?

“Don’t you see? I’m not deciding their destiny, I am giving them the possibility of a life, a life worth living.”

Merritt squeezed his temples between the thumb and fingers of one hand. “Look, Magda, even if I wanted to do this, I can’t.”

Running out of patience, she folded her arms. “Why not?”

He took a deep breath before explaining. “The process is similar to what we did to invest power in the sword. The difference is that the sword has no life force of its own, so it needed to borrow a life force to help in its creation. You provided that with the Grace drawn in your blood.

“Creating the Confessor power is similar in purpose and in many ways in the methods involved, but there is a crucial difference. You have your own life force. You can’t be given someone else’s life force to turn you into a Confessor the way we turned the sword into the key. You need to use your own.”

Magda shrugged. “All right. I can draw another Grace with my own blood.”

He was shaking his head. “Ordinarily that would be the first step. But you have already given your strength to the sword. I don’t think that you understand the true depth of what you so willingly gave over to create the sword. Right now you don’t have enough strength to be able to do it for yourself.”

“I think I do. We can try. We have to try.”

“Do you think I’m guessing about this?” Merritt stepped close and leaned toward her in an effort to make sure she grasped his point. “It’s not simply that it wouldn’t work, Magda. It’s that the attempt would kill you.”

She let out a sigh. “Are you so sure, Merritt? I’m pretty strong. You just saw me fight those men.”